National Book Awards finalists announced

Just a day after Richard Flanagan won the Man Booker Prize in London, the literary spotlight sweeps back to the United States for the announcement of the National Book Awards finalists.

This honored group includes some of the most critically acclaimed authors in America, such as Pulitzer Prize winners Marilynne Robinson and E.O. Wilson and former U.S. Poet Laureate Louise Glück.

But it’s striking to note what luminaries were culled from last month’s longlist: Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley, former U.S. Poet Laureate Mark Strand, National Book Award winner Richard Powers and MacArthur “genius” Edward Hirsch.

Instead, attention will shine on a young Marine who served in Iraq, a cartoonist at the New Yorker, the co-founder of a small literary press and a foreign correspondent, among others.

At the ceremony in New York on Nov. 19, $10,000 will be awarded to the winner in each category: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Young People’s Literature. The finalists will receive $1,000 each.

The National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters will be presented to fantasy/sf writer Ursula K. Le Guin. The Literarian Award for Outstanding Contribution to the American Literary Community will be presented to Kyle Zimmer, co-founder of First Book, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that has delivered 100 million books to disadvantaged children. Daniel Handler, author of the darkly comic Lemony Snicket books, will be the host.

The finalists for the 2014 National Book Awards:

(Courtesy of Scribner)

Fiction

“An Unnecessary Woman” (Grove), by Rabih Alameddine, a Lebanese American artist who lives in San Francisco and Beirut. His novel tells the story of a reclusive translator in Lebanon.

“Redeployment” (The Penguin Press), a debut collection of stories by Iraq War vet Phil Klay, who is one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 authors for 2014.

“Station Eleven” (Knopf), by Emily St. John Mandel, a staff writer at the Millions. This post-apocalyptic novel about a flu epidemic is one of the very few sci-fi novels that have ever been finalists for the NBA.

“Threatened” (Scholastic), by Eliot Schrefer, who was an NBA finalist in 2012 for “Endangered.”

“The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights” (Roaring Brook), by Steve Sheinkin, who was an NBA finalist in 2012 for “Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal The World’s Most Dangerous Weapon,” which was a Newbery Honor Book.

“Noggin” (Atheneum), by John Corey Whaley, who was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree for “Where Things Come Back” (2011).

“Revolution: The Sixties Trilogy, Book II” (Scholastic), by Deborah Wiles, who was an NBA finalist in 2005 for “Each Little Bird That Sings.”

“This Blue” (FSG), by Maureen N. McLane, a professor of English at New York Univeristy.

“The Feel Trio” (Letter Machine Editions), by Fred Moten, co-founder of the literary press Three Count Pour. Letter Machine Editions, in Tucson, was founded just seven years ago and has published only about a dozen books.

“Citizen: An American Lyric” (Graywolf), by Claudia Rankine, an English professor at Pomona College.